Mike Cushman

Mike Cushman is JVL’s Membership Secretary. He first joined the Labour Party and a trade union at 16. His involvement in trades unions has been lifelong; his involvement in the Labour Party has been more broken and finally ended when he was expelled for exercising his right to free speech. He has been both a constituency labour party secretary and a union branch secretary. He has a long involvement in international solidarity movements from Vietnam, through Chile, the former Portuguese colonies and South Africa to Palestine. He became active on Palestine in 2002 when he was asked to sign a declaration to renounce his ‘right to return’ to Israel. Since then, in particular, he has been active in the academic boycott movement and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods. He was on the last boat to enter Gaza in 2008 before the Israeli siege became total. He has continuing responsibility for stewarding the Jewish Bloc on the London Gaza demonstrations.